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No. The toughest thing to do is come into a one-run game in the late innings with two on, none out and keep it a one-run game. Starting the ninth with a lead and clean bases is not as hard. So what’s keeping teams from thinking that way?

Regardless of the silliness of arguing for 'closer mentality'. A player has to know that the team has his back when he does eventually blow it. The closer 'role' is the team telling him, you are our handpicked guy for these situations and we are going to stick with you. You can't just save your best reliever for only the nearly impossible jobs. Mind you, it would be nice if closers were asked to extend themselves more and see if they can get more than just one inning saves.

I do wonder if MLB has moved past the point of having a true "fireman" in the pen anymore? Obviously it makes sense to have the flexibility to use someone like Chapman or Kimbrel in any tough spot 6th inning onward, but I wonder how much of the human element plays into this. Do relief pitchers necessarily feel more comfortable, and therefore perform better, when designated into "roles"? That way it gives them their routines and semi-consistent schedules, just like a starters.

Please inform the Sox of this so, they find some way to stop the bleeding.

The Sox should try getting good (which would exclude Aces and Hammerhands) and healthy relievers (which would exclude Bailey and apparently Hammerhands) and then give them enough time in the organization to prove themselves and get comfortable (which would exclude Melancon who was sent down after 2+ really bad innings and has been really good every other time since he became a MLB regular, including later in 2012). I'm gonna guess that Tazawa will work out fine in the closer role and the bleeding will stop.

I'd prefer Uehara. But the knock there is they want to avoid using him back to back days. Strangely enough, they have been using him back to back days in higher leverage appearances than the usual 'save the guy for the ninth'. So I guess that works out.

I think Bailey and Tazawa fit the role of "90% of guys will get saves by accident" just fine. Bailey has to stay healthy of course.

I do wonder if MLB has moved past the point of having a true "fireman" in the pen anymore? Obviously it makes sense to have the flexibility to use someone like Chapman or Kimbrel in any tough spot 6th inning onward, but I wonder how much of the human element plays into this. Do relief pitchers necessarily feel more comfortable, and therefore perform better, when designated into "roles"? That way it gives them their routines and semi-consistent schedules, just like a starters.

Yes, that is exactly the argument in favor of the Closer Role.

I wonder whether a better way to get more out of your best relievers would simply be to put them on a relatively strict rotation with relatively strict pitch counts, the same way you do with starters. Say each reliever pitches every other day, and the best relievers get preference--so if the starter goes 7 and you only need one reliever to finish the game and the relief ace pitched two days ago, then the relief ace goes in first, to keep his schedule as regular as possible. The lesser relievers might have to wait four or five days between appearances if the starters are going deep. And the pitch count would be strict--you get 30 pitches and then you're done. The first batter you face with a pitch count over 25 will the your last, period. So if the pitcher's dealing he might get through 1.2 or 2 innings; if he's getting hit he might only get one or two outs before the next guy comes out.

With a seven-man relief staff you would have three sets of relievers that would alternate days. I don't think 30 pitches every other day constitutes overwork for a relief pitcher, and you'd keep the workloads stable. Then you'd have one longman... preferably you'd have two quad-A guys with an option. When the starter gets bounced early or you go extra innings, you can work the longman to death, 120 or 130 pitches if necessary, and concede the game to keep your bullpen in order if need be. Then switch him out with someone in Triple-A immediately. Mostly a situation calling for using up the longman would only come up once a week or so, so you could mostly get away with this. On the occasions you can't, you'll have to send down a position player to extend the bullpen until you can get everyone sorted out again.

It seems to me that if it's true that relief pitchers are more effective when given defined roles and a regular schedule, this would be a good way to get the most effectiveness out of them--even if it calls for using your better relievers earlier in the game and your weaker ones in the ninth. Your best reliever would pitch something like 70 games, 110 innings this way, and while you lose the ability to aim him at the close games, you'd still be getting a lot of value out of him compared to the modern 65 games/65 innings closer.

You also give up the flexibility to play left-right matchups, but if relievers are better on regularly scheduled work then the benefit of that plus the benefit of getting a lot more innings out of your two best relievers would outweigh the lost benefit of using a couple roster spots on LOOGYs.

The toughest thing to do is come into a one-run game in the late innings with two on, none out and keep it a one-run game.

Your ace reliever's arm will fall off if you decide he should be ready any time the first two batters reach in the late innings. Even worse, his arm will fall off from overuse in the bullpen rather than from overuse in actual games. The blind adherence to the script is obnoxious, but the writer's example illustrates the reason the script exists in the first place.

#9 ... not really. This is always overstated in these threads. Nobody ever had problems with this before. Relievers didn't bounce up and down in the bullpen in those days anymore than they do now. This is why trips to the mound were invented.

Correct, you don't have your best guy warm up three times in one game -- you use him when he's ready. Running the risk of using him in a low-leverage situation because the problem went away is more optimal than guaranteeing to use him in a low-leverage situation.

And even if we buy the logic you propose, that doesn't address the question of why not use your best reliever to start the 8th inning with Harper, Cabrera, Fielder due up rather than save him for the 9th.

This "role" stuff is silliness. Their "role" is relief pitcher. You want to make the guy feel like a stud? How does "you are my guy when the game is on the line and I don't care when that is -- you're my guy, you're going in" not express extreme confidence. And how does "you're my guy until you blow two straight saves" express confidence?

And even if we buy the logic you propose, that doesn't address the question of why not use your best reliever to start the 8th inning with Harper, Cabrera, Fielder due up rather than save him for the 9th.

Because a lot of teams seem to think (some of them correctly, depending on their personnel) that their best reliever in that situation is actually a succession of platoon specialists.

Do relief pitchers necessarily feel more comfortable, and therefore perform better, when designated into "roles"? That way it gives them their routines and semi-consistent schedules, just like a starters.

The whole "feel more comfortable and therefor perform better" is something that is asserted with no proof. It seems logical, I suppose, in a general sense. And people are very quick to point out that in their particular corporate office that people perform better when assigned specific roles. But there is no reason to think that this applies to baseball in general, and to relief pitchers in particular.

As Walt points out, even if you accept the role concept, why would we believe that the role of closer is more comfortable than the role of fireman? OK, people have stated that they want to know their role. But these are basically closers who have a vested interest in keeping the closer role. Or guys who want to be named closer. When's the last time you heard a player say, "I am so glad that I know that my role is 7th inning guy. It's much better than being part of a closer committee and getting 1 save per week."?

That's just why I think, if you believe knowing your role and when and how you're going to be used is important, it makes a lot more sense to tell your best relief pitcher, "you're throwing 30 pitches every other day, and you're the first man in the game after the starter leaves" than to just throw him at Save Situations.

That's just why I think, if you believe knowing your role and when and how you're going to be used is important, it makes a lot more sense to tell your best relief pitcher, "you're throwing 30 pitches every other day, and you're the first man in the game after the starter leaves" than to just throw him at Save Situations.

Eh, unless the starter gets hurt or really gets the #### kicked out of him, the relief ace can pretty much count on entering the game right around the 90 to 105 minute point. If the game starts at 7 he can pretty reliably set his watch alarm for 8:20 or so. If the starter leaves extra early someone else can go in first, so as not to disturb the relief ace's beauty sleep. :)

So I've collected the data from Retrosheet game logs from 1915-2012, which gives a pretty complete picture of how teams have done protecting leads over time and also gives the run environment for each ballpark over time. And Dave Studenmund has put together a spreadsheet, which I've used for a long time, that shows the probability that a team with an average offense will score "x" runs in an inning given a particular park run environment, so we can provide a baseline estimate of the likelihood that a team leading by "x" runs in a particular ballpark will lose that lead in a given inning.

In 2012, in Coors Field (the best hitters' park of 2012), the teams averaged 6.3 runs per nine innings. In that environment, one would expect a team to score at least one run in an inning 34.8% of the time, so we'd estimate that a team should hold a one-run lead in Coors 65.2% of the time. In 2012, in Safeco Field (the best pitchers' park of 2012), the teams averaged 3.2 runs per nine innings. In that environment, one would expect a team to score at least one run in an inning 21.3% of the time, so we'd estimate that a team should hold a one-run lead in Safeco 78.7% of the time. When we compare the actual to the estimate, park by park and year by year, we have an approach to measure one aspect of how the changes in bullpen usage have impacted team results.

In 2012, in innings 7-9, teams held a lead of 1-3 runs on 4069 occasions. Based on lead size and park run environments, we'd estimate that those teams would lose 649.53 of those leads. Teams actually lost 522 of those leads, or 80.4% of the expectation. That is the lowest percentage of actual to expected leads lost over the entire period from 1915 through 2012.

Since 1974 - Mike Marshall's historic year - the trend has been almost entirely downward, with spikes explained in part by the two long work stoppages in 1981 and 1994. After Marshall's loss of effectiveness in 1975, teams responded by reducing the innings they gave their #1 reliever, and the way they approached this was (a) using them less often when the team was trailing and then (b) using them less often when the game was tied. I have noted that this does not appear to be a direct reaction to the save statistic, which was formally adopted in 1969, but more a response to Marshall's loss of effectiveness combined with aftereffects of the adoption of the DH in the AL, and the 1977 expansion.

I am not saying that this is the best way to use relievers, only that it's worked well enough so that teams don't have any incentive to change.

Spycake/#18: Yes, because the numbers are drawn from the game logs rather than from the PBP files (which don't go all the way back to 1915). I have the box score event files that go back to 1915, but I have to write some code to parse and evaluate those, which is easier said than done. Even then I can tell *in what inning* a pitcher is replaced, but when the replacement happens in mid-inning I won't know exactly what the situation is when the pitcher is replaced.

The Studenmund spreadsheet yields run probabilities for every base-out situation in an inning, based on the run environment, so I can assign a blown-lead probability to every game situation, and by knowing that I can generate an expectation for every pitcher, every appearance, every inning. I like looking at situations where the defensive team starts the inning with a lead because (a) the team in the lead generally wins the game and (b) reducing a lead tends to have more impact on the outcome of the game than extending a deficit, so for a pitcher, holding a trailing team close is generally less valuable than maintaining a lead (which is not to say that it's unimportant, only that if a manager has a choice he's usually better off using his better relievers to hold leads).

#17 I think one thing that you're missing is that teams are simply using better pitchers to close out games than (say) 1970. In 1970 Chapman would have been a starter (so would Papelbon) and the closer would typically be somebody judged not good enough to start (Dave Giusti comes to mind).

Good career relievers were generally trick pitchers. Knucklers (Wilhelm) or submariners (Abernathy for instance) Ron Perranoski is an obvious exception, but it's pretty clear to me that by the time Bill James made his comment about Todd Worrell (as a rookie) that there had been a culture change and we're seeing it in your results. It's not an insult to be assigned to the bullpen, it's a judgement based on perceived stamina and (in general) breadth of repertoire.

And there's no more journeymen trying to gut out a complete game. It would indeed be interesting to see how frequently a mediocre starter was given an opportunity to lose a lead and how that's changed over time.

Spycake/#20: I would expect that they are affected in just that way, which would (in large part) explain why teams went to a fireman model in the first place.

The history of relief pitcher usage is that before WWII, relievers almost always pitched when their teams were losing; starters stayed in the game when they had a lead, and if they had to be replaced they were frequently replaced with another starter. Yes, there were the occasional Firpo Marberry and Grandma Murphy types, but if you actually look at their usage in relief, you find that they usually came in with a lead in one of three situations:

1. a starter (almost always a lesser starter) was on the mound with a good-sized lead but got into trouble;
2. a top-line starter was having a rare off-day; or
3. the starter left for a pinch-hitter in an inning where the team took the lead

It's not that they weren't used to protect leads, but that such usage wasn't consistent and often was a result of factors other than the "ace" standing for the reliever.

In the 1924 World Series, for example, Marberry made three relief appearances (he also started Game 3). In Game 2, the Senators took a 3-1 lead to the ninth, but Bucky Harris left Tom Zachary in to allow two runs to tie and didn't bring Marberry into the game until after the lead had vanished. Under today's rules Marberry would have gotten the win when Washington won the game in the bottom half, but the scorer awarded it to Zachary. Marberry was "credited" with a save, retroactively, that he probably should not be since he didn't enter the game with the lead.

In Game 5, Marberry came in to replace lefty George Mogridge with a 7-2 lead but with two runners on to face Hack Wilson. Wilson drove in one run with a single but Marberry closed down the Giants afterward, giving up another meaningless run in the ninth. Again, under today's rules this isn't a save, and arguably it was done not because Marberry was the ace reliever but because Harris wanted a righty to face Wilson.

In Game 7, in a somewhat famous maneuver, Curly Ogden started for Washington, but left after one hitter in favor of lefty Mogridge. John McGraw had started Bill Terry (who had been smoking the ball) over Irish Meusel (who hadn't) when Ogden took the hill, and he let Terry hit twice against Mogridge, but when his third go-round came up in the sixth, with two runners on, McGraw sent up Meusel - and then Harris countered with Marberry, who ended up giving up a sac fly to Meusel and then had back-to-back errors behind him which let in two more runs.

Significantly, in neither the 3-1 outing in Game 2 nor the 2-1 Senator win in Game 6 did Harris use Marberry to hold the lead. In the latter contest Wilson, who had driven in the tying run in Game 2 against Zachary, was batting again with the tying run on base and two outs, and Harris left Zachary, a lefty, out there.

In 1925 Marberry pitched twice. In Game 3 he finished up when Aleck Ferguson left for a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning, during which the Senators took the lead. In Game 5, with Washington trailing 4-3, Zachary came in first in relief, and Marberry didn't come in until Zachary gave up a run in the 8th and had two on and two out in the ninth; Marberry then yielded a hit to make it 6-3. In Game 7, when Walter Johnson blew leads of 6-3 and 7-6, Marberry didn't make an appearance (and Ban Johnson later took Harris to task for leaving Johnson out there).

Murphy's WS appearances had some similarities. In 1936 his only appearance was as a true fireman, replacing Lefty Gomez with a 5-3 lead when Lefty got into trouble. In 1937, he replaced Monte Pearson with a 5-1 lead, bases loaded, and two out in the ninth after Pearson had issued two walks with two outs to bring up the tying run. In 1938, his appearance came when Gomez left for a pinch-hitter, trailing 3-2, only to have Dizzy Dean give up a two-run HR to Frank Crosetti to hand the win to Lefty and the save to Murphy. In 1939 he came in after Steve Sundra had given up a 2-0 lead; the Yankees ultimately tied it in the 9th and won in the 10th. In 1941, Murhpy came in twice, both times with the Yankees trailing. In 1943 he came in once with the Yankees trailing and once after starter Hank Borowy left for a pinch-hitter in an inning where the Yankees scored 5 times to take a 6-2 lead.

It wasn't until the 1950s that you started seeing more-or-less consistent usage of "ace" relievers in close game situations, and even then it was more often in support of lesser starters than it was in support of top-end starters, who usually finished up their own games regardless of who was in the bullpen. And it wasn't until the 70s that you started seeing the ace used in support of the guys at the front of the rotation on a more-or-less regular basis.

Ron/#21: I'm certainly not ignoring that, but there's a bit of a chicken/egg argument going on here - did teams decide to put better pitchers into the role because they realized the importance of the role, or did the fact that better pitchers were available for the role push teams to implement the role?

There is no question that there was a culture change - but the culture change started right after WWII and had pretty much taken hold by 1960. Every club had an ace reliever at the back of the bullpen. It wasn't always obvious, because there were still a lot of bad teams, but even the bad teams were concentrating most of their late-inning high-leverage innings into a single person who was primarily a reliever, not a starter/closer like Allie Reynolds. The culture change that occurred after 1975 pushed teams in the direction of spreading additional high-leverage innings among their relievers, looking for ways to take the burden off the #1 guy - and to figure out a way to develop pitchers with the idea that they'd be career relievers.